By Donna Reuss
Alexandria, VA – This idiom might be a good descriptor of the United States Coast Guard. It is at once a federal law enforcement agency and a military force. It is dedicated to maritime safety and security, enforcing federal laws on the high seas, the nation’s coastal waters, and inland waterways; protecting the marine environment and our coastline and ports; and saving lives. As one of the country’s six armed services, it also serves under the Department of the Navy in wartime, or at the direction of the President. It has served under the Departments of the Treasury, Transportation, and currently, Homeland Security. It is unique in our nation and the world.
Fans of Alexander Hamilton may know that we have him to thank for creation of the Coast Guard. Needing a way to ensure much-needed tariff revenue after the Revolutionary War, Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton urged Congress to authorize a maritime service to enforce tariff and trade laws, and to halt the smuggling activities rampant along the Atlantic Coast. On August 4, 1790, President George Washington signed the Tariff Act, authorizing construction of ten “revenue cutter” vessels. This marked the officially recognized birthday of the service which eventually became the U.S. Coast Guard.
Eight months later, in March 1791, President Washington commissioned the first “Masters of a Cutter in the Service of the United States for the Protection of the Revenue.” Alternately known as the “system of cutters,” “Revenue Service,” and “Revenue-Marine,” the name “Revenue Cutter Service” was first used statutorily in 1863.
The service expanded in size and responsibilities as our nation grew, but in 1912, President Howard Taft recommended abolishing the Revenue Cutter Service as a cost-cutting measure. Three years later, Congress passed the “Act to Create the Coast Guard,” combining the service with the U.S. Life-Saving Service. President Woodrow Wilson signed the act on January 28, 1915, forming a single maritime organization designated the “U.S. Coast Guard,” dedicated both to saving lives at sea and enforcing the nation’s maritime laws.
With the U.S. declaration of war on Germany in 1917, control of the Coast Guard was transferred to the Navy. After the war, enforcement of the 1920 Volstead Act, better known as Prohibition, fell to the Treasury Department, and the “Rum War” became a central Coast Guard mission until the Act was repealed in 1933. The service came under Navy control again during World War II.
President Franklin Roosevelt transferred the Lighthouse Service to the Coast Guard in 1939, giving it responsibility for operating the nation’s lighthouses and maintaining maritime navigation aids. And in 1946, Congress transferred the Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation to the Coast Guard, placing merchant marine licensing and almost all aspects of merchant-marine personnel and ship safety under Coast Guard purview.
Transfer to the Department of Transportation (DOT) in 1967 increased Coast Guard responsibility for economic traffic, migrant interdiction, and dealing with hazardous cargo. The service also took over administration of navigable waterway bridges that year. Then, in March 2003, it was transferred again, this time to the newly formed Department of Homeland Security, where national defense remains one of its most important functions.
Happy 236th Birthday to one of the federal government’s oldest organizations, and the oldest continuously serving sea service! Semper Paratus!
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